It is true that the term ‘Byzantine’ ( Byzantios) in Greek sources almost always indicates a direct relation with the city of Constantinople, the ancient Greek colony of Byzantium.
It is therefore not surprising that Anthony Kaldellis has questioned how far we can lean on the term ‘Byzantine’, given that ‘Roman’ was the main self-descriptive term used by the inhabitants of the empire. In fact, it is believed that the term ‘Byzantine’, which many modern historians use instead of ‘Roman’, was coined by Hieronymus Wolf in the sixteenth century in order to distinguish the classical Roman Empire from its medieval Greek-speaking continuation. Despite the variety of interpretations regarding the collective identity of these people, there is a consensus that the state and its social elites identified as Roman throughout the centuries. Scholars have offered new approaches to this subject suggesting new, but conflicting, ways of understanding the way in which the inhabitants of what we call the ‘Byzantine’ or ‘Eastern Roman’ Empire viewed themselves. In recent years there has been growing scholarly interest in Eastern Roman identity.
